Saturday, 16 May 2015

Marathon Man (1976)

"Is it safe?"

When his brother is killed in an accident in New York, Szell, a Nazi hiding in the jungles of South America, is spooked. He leaves his hiding place and travels to the States to collect his hidden loot convinced that the authorities are onto him. Meanwhile Doc, a member of the "division", is murdered by one of Szell's men. That's not enough for the Nazi, he needs to know how close they are and so he kidnaps Doc's brother, a student and runner, and tries to find some answers.

Staring Rod Scheider as Doc, Dustin Hoffman as his brother Babe and Laurence Olivier as Szell, this is another of those "grey 70s" thrillers written by William Goldman and directed by Midnight Cowboy director John Schlesinger. It's a tense and brooding film featuring an iconic dental torture scene and carrying themes of love, family and, over all, betrayal. Scheider is better remembered for this than he is for Jaws and Hoffman still seems young and hungry, although he was 38. A real mid-seventies American classic only let down by the slightly silly make up on Larry Olivier. His rather grey look however may have something to do with the fact that he was suffering from a very aggressive cancer at the time of filming and in fact it took pressure from the House of Lords to get Lloyds to insure him so he could take the part.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074860/?ref_=nv_sr_1




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